namespace issues with old C headers

[Joe Buck]

On Sun, Apr 13, 2003 at 10:35:12AM +0200, Gabriel Dos Reis wrote:
> | My code might compile on GNU's
> | C++ library version foo, but not version bar, and certainly not in
> | someone else's libstdc++ implementation. 
> 
> Yes, and that is not libstdc++'s problem.  If you want to solve that
> problem then you need to take to the C++ standards committees.

I disagree; the standards committees are not forcing libstdc++ to
promiscuously include headers, they are only PERMITTING it to do so.
The standard is a minimum requirement only.

I recognize that fixing this issue will be difficult, but one change
alone could greatly improve things: figure out how to avoid creating
a definition for the assert macro if the user did not include <assert.h>
or <cassert>.  I recognize that this is difficult because libstdc++ and
the C library are under separate management.